Pestilence
by aforgottenwish
Summary: Tragedy, in the form of an epidemic, visits Smallville. Clark, as the only one unaffected, is faced with the aftermath, including the Luthor mansion, and the memories and death it holds. Set before Promise
1. Chapter 1

_Smallville_ and all of its related elements are copyright © 2001 - 2007 Tollin-Robbins Productions, WB Television and DC Comics. Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

Chapter One (of 4)

Considering the week Clark had just lived through, he had seriously doubted that he could feel any worse. Standing in front of the Luthor mansion, its vines and turrets looming over him like an unbeatable enemy, he truly thought he'd rather die than step inside.

Lana would be there, he thought, and Lex. Their bodies would be, at least; they'd be comfortably entwined and unsuspecting, tucked into bed for the last time. They'd be slumped over their last meal, her hair limp in the spilled wine. Lana would be curled up on the couch, with Lex's body crumpled near the pool table, the cue having rolled from his dead hand.

Shaking his head, Clark purged his mind of those hopeful, jealous thoughts. The illness took at least twenty four hours to take hold. Before anyone died they endured more than a day of suffering as their digestive systems malfunctioned and their lungs filled with fluid. When he entered this house, he would find Lex and Lana, most likely lying flat out in bed, surrounded by a pool of vomit and feces.

It would not be pretty; it would be like every other death he had watched since the virus hit Smallville. He had nearly convinced himself that he had watched every single person die; that he had comforted each pale face and cried with the people left behind.

He thought that he was done; that he had dug the last of hundreds of graves and finished burning hundreds of names into hundreds of stones. He knew, though, that he wasn't. He had one house left to visit.

He didn't know where it had come from. He didn't know if the rest of the world still existed. He only knew that it had changed Smallville into a dead town nearly overnight. He knew that it had no effect on him, that he was immune. He knew of the pain it caused; he knew of death.

And he had saved Lana for last.

Before the phones had stopped working he had called out, only once, to his mother's cell. She had been in Metropolis for the week, and had since relocated to Star City. He had told her not to come, and not to send help. There had been only a few left then, those with stronger immune systems, the people his age. But they, too, were going to die.

"_Mom," he had called into the phone._

"_My God, Clark," she had replied. "What's happening in there? They've declared it quarantine. They say that everyone is dead."_

_Clark had held the phone to his ear with both hands, and wondered at how his strength was, now, after thirty hours of hell, failing him._

_He stumbled to his knees._

"_They're not all dead," he whispered. "But they will be."_

"_What is it, Clark?" Martha asked. "What's killing them?"_

"_I don't know." He looked into his living room, where a dozen people, in their early twenties, sat around a fire. "I don't know anything."_

_Martha stifled a sob. "You can leave, Clark. You can come to Washington and we'll send help."_

"_Don't bother." His voice sounded dead. His voice sounded stripped of vigour and life, of hope. "They're infected. It's some sort of virus, I guess. They're going to die."_

_There was a long silence. "Chloe's okay?" Clark asked._

"_Yes," his mother said. "Metropolis has been evacuated, but everyone's fine."_

"_And Lois?"_

"_She's not here. Chloe doesn't know where she is."_

_Clark hesitated. Lois wouldn't be in Smallville, she was probably safe, visiting her father or sister. She should have been with Chloe, though. He didn't want to ask about Lana, but he knew that his mother would know about Lex's whereabouts. _

"_And Lana?" he finally said._

"_She—" Martha started. She paused, and Clark could hear her taking short, gasping breaths. "She was with Lex in Smallville, Clark. The quarantine was declared before they could get out. Phone lines are still up, but electricity—"_

"_I know," Clark said. "Everything is blocked in. Everyone—I heard that they're shooting down helicopters and barricading roads."_

"_They don't want to chance that the virus could spread."_

"_That's why I can't leave, mom," he said, his voice husky, the realization that Lana would not have escaped this settling in. "I don't know if it could somehow cling to me; contaminate my clothing, or be in my breath."_

_There was a long silence. Martha Kent wanted her son back. "So you'll stay, then," she said._

"_Until everyone's dead and buried," he replied softly. He didn't want the people near him to hear. He didn't want them to know that he'd given up, though they all had. He didn't want them to know that he knew he'd live through it. "Once everyone's gone, I suppose, you'll have to send scientists after me. Have them, you know, make sure I'm clean."_

"_They'll want to know how you're still alive," Martha protested._

_Clark breathed in deeply; the air arid and thick with the smell of decay, vomit and sweat. "We'll worry about it when it happens."_

He remembered how, once he had hung up, he had stayed there, on the floor, for nearly an hour. He had pushed back tears and quietly surrendered the phone when someone; a football player from Smallville High, a few years younger than him and not getting any older; had come to take it from him. They all wanted to say their goodbyes.

So Clark had watched them, as their skin yellowed and their organs rebelled, and they phoned their parents, if they had been out of town, or their friends from Metropolis. Those with no one to call visited graves; they didn't ask questions about how the holes had been dug, or how their loved ones names were engraved sloppily into rocks. At this point, they'd all lost their drive, their will to live, and with it had gone their curiosity.

He had thought of visiting Lana, of racing up to the mansion and saying his goodbyes. He missed her everyday, and now, watching so many people die with regrets, he had started to rethink his decisions.

He started to wonder if maybe, Lana and he could have been happy. He thought of that day, so long ago, the disappeared day, when he had made his voice sound deep and strong and reached out to her and said, "Do you trust me?"

She had died so soon after; their happiness was absolute and short lived, like the life of a rock star, or a butterfly. He hadn't tried again. Though he had done it differently, she still would have died, but he couldn't look past his guilt.

Maybe, he mused, it should have been different. She was dying now, despite his best attempts to protect her. So, sick with regret, he hadn't gone. He knew if he saw her, he would only be able to tell her that he loved her, and that would ruin everything.

He had stayed in the town and comforted people, because no one that he loved had died yet.

Because, if he didn't see her body, then he could pretend that she was still alive.

He had already dug the graves for Lana and Lex. Reluctantly, he had put them side-by-side. Hesitantly, he had burned Lex's birthday into the rock—he didn't want to admit that he still remembered it. If he was honest with himself, he had always believed that he and Lex would reconcile sometime in the distant future—sometime, at least, before he died.

Now he stood, the castle looming before him, wondering if this was what he really, really wanted. He could leave, and let the bodies of his best friend and first love ferment on the rug.

Finally, he pulled the door of the mansion open.

It was predictably silent. The eerie sound of his breathing echoed off the stone walls. He didn't x-ray the place, or speed from room to room. He was terrified and wanted, more than anything, to put off the inevitable. He would find Lex and Lana, and he would cry; he would cry for the friendships he had lost before this hellish week had started, and he would cry for the lives that this virus had taken. He hadn't cried yet, though, not for his own loss.

Lex and Lana: they were his loss. He had loved them, estranged them, and now they were gone.

He walked the familiar path to the study, first. He went to Lex's bedroom, to Lana's bedroom, to the kitchen. He stumbled into the room that had been decked out in baby decorations; another life lost.

Finally, he squinted at the walls, looking through everything, found nothing.

He didn't allow himself to hope.

Hesitantly, he let his eyes drop shut. As the visible world dropped away, he allowed the sounds of a dead town to be amplified. From across the entire town, only his heart beat. In the mansion, there was no sound of ragged, sickly breathing. There were no whispered words. This was a deadly virus; even the rabbits and livestock had died.

Lex, of course, would not have allowed Lana to die. He had gotten out, somehow, snuck past the army or paid them off. The empty house echoed.

The desperate thought, _Now what?_ jumped into his mind. He considered going down into Lex's famed wine cellar and testing the limits of his metabolism. Maybe, after downing fifty or so bottles of red, he would be able to blur out the rest of the world. There also was another form of red that would get him off, for sure, but the castle called to him, prohibiting a speedy escape. At least here, there were walls.

So he wandered the mansion, pulling off doors and peering around corners on the off chance that there was a room made out of lead where Lana and Lex might have stumbled to die.

He wanted to trip and stay down; he wanted to drown in a pool of his own vomit. He wanted to see his mother again.

He let himself slide down a wall, and hated that even now, his strength was enough that it was a conscious decision to fall. He rubbed his eyes with his dirt covered hands. They smelt of death.

Slumping sideways, for the first time since it had gotten really bad, he let himself sleep.

Dead babies danced on the inside of his eyelids. Dreaming, he remembered how it had started with the infants and elderly. Ten newborns died in one day, and shortly after, every retirement home was dealing with so many ill and dead. Some just gave out, their hearts stopping in their sleep. Others suffered through the long list of symptoms that Clark had learned to associate with the illness. They stopped eating. They spent their last hours on the toilet as their bodies rejected food, medication and water.

The babies, though. Clark had seen them. They had just stopped breathing, their tiny lips blue and their fingers always curled into fists. There had been no explanation. A coincidence, they said; the mass outbreak of SIDS and the strange illness afflicting the elderly.

A week later, and everyone was dead.

Clark opened his eyes. It was dark.

At least now, he thought, there were no dead babies. He hadn't even had to bury most of them; there had been parents alive to sob over their bodies and decide where they would rest.

Pushing himself to his feet, he contemplated the mansion again. He had a feeling. Though he couldn't hear or see anyone, he knew that the mansion was not as empty as it appeared. He wondered if somehow, because of the closeness he had had with the people in question, he could sense them.

Perhaps it was the distant, filtered sound of breathing. He had thought it came from Metropolis. It might have been the strange, impossible feeling of life that the walls exuded. He started to walk.

He found himself in the wine cellar. Hesitantly, he pulled a bottle of red from the wall. It was a French Merlot. Carefully, in lieu of a corkscrew, he used his heat vision to melt off the very top of the bottle. He brought it to his lips and waiting, half expecting Lex to jump from the shadows and yell, "Thief!"

No one came.

The wine was too fruity for his tastes. He placed it on the ground.

It was then that he knew. Lana was alive.

From somewhere below him, he had heard her voice.


	2. Chapter 2

_Smallville_ and all of its related elements are copyright © 2001 - 2007 Tollin-Robbins Productions, WB Television and DC Comics. Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

Chapter Two (of 4)

Lex watched the security screens. He rarely looked away, these days, though he suspected that no one would come to save them.

He knew it was a waiting game. The longer they waited, the more likely it was that the virus had killed everyone and thereby eliminated itself. However, they were running low on food, and there was no way of knowing if they'd be able to reach safety once they'd left the safety of the Room.

Lex had dealt with chemical and virus warfare before. He had attempted to develop interrogation drugs and selective killing gases and even something similar to what was currently being unleashed on Smallville. He had created a room, far below the mansion, that could be entered through an elevator and then a series of antibiotic and disinfecting rooms. It was stocked with food enough for two, for an unspecified amount of time. It had septic and a large, purified store of water.

Lana had watched the screen with him for the first while. Now, she just stared at one white wall. A few days ago, she had looked up at him with wet eyes and said, "Clark's dead."

He hadn't asked how she knew. He hadn't demanded to know if she still loved the farm boy, because he had accepted that she would never stop loving him.

They had listened to the radio, and sent out SOS signals and hoped that someone would come to save them. The radio had been saying for days now that everyone was dead. Lex didn't trust the radio; he believed that they were just trying to discourage the desperate rescue attempts.

Now, though, he finally believed it. Everyone was dead. He turned away from the screens, wanting to suggest that they attempt to leave, but Lana was standing directly behind him and found his face buried just below her breasts.

"Look," she whispered.

Clark stood at the door of the mansion.

Lex zoomed in on him and locked on his frame, ordering the camera to follow him as he walked slowly forward.

Out of one camera and into another, he glided, as though half dead. His eyes were heavy lidded and he stopped for a moment, as though convincing himself to move forward.

The screen shifted as Clark walked into the study. Lex watched him run his hands over the green of the pool table and finger the sword that hung on the wall. Lana's breath hitched as he turned back to the camera and nearly looked right at it, dirt smudged over one cheekbone.

They watched him, wordlessly, as he wandered from room to room. Clark went into the baby's room, and Lana let out a soft _oh,_ as if just remembering her miscarriage.

And they both wondered what could possibly be going through his mind as he closed his eyes as though meditating. They both wondered how he could have survived when no one else had.

Such was the mystery of Clark Kent.

"We could ask," Lana whispered. "But he'd just deny."

They had experienced the denial. Clark would pretend that there was nothing strange about being the sole survivor of an epidemic that killed even the sheep.

Suddenly, what must have been anger rippled through Clark. He started moving again, faster, and he was tearing off doors and running and knocking down walls and they both knew that Clark Kent was something other than human.

Clark stopped.

Clark fell to the ground.

Clark closed his eyes.

Lana whispered those same words again, the one's she'd said before, with the same certainty and the same anguish.

"Clark's dead."

They watched his body.

"He would be the last," Lex said. "No one else is as strong as him."

Their eyes met, and Lana felt a sob rip through her body.

She had cried plenty when Lex had dragged her down here. She had hated him for making her live when so many others were dying. She knew that, if she had been given a choice, she would have been out there, helping, or suffering. Lex had tried soothing her, tried touching her, but she had flinched away. She had curled up in the corner of the double bed they shared and had sobbed herself to sleep every night.

Before this week, she had never considered herself as someone who cried easily. Knowing that tens of thousands of people were dying just above could change a person.

She stopped the tears now. "I thought I felt him die," she whispered. "It was just this tremendous feeling of despair and relief."

Lex turned his eyes towards her, his wife, the woman who he had agreed to marry despite her love for another man, the woman who he had tricked into becoming his fiancé. He looked up at her, from where he sat, and surrendered.

"Do you feel that despair now?" he asked quietly.

A shaking hand, nails bitten to the flesh, reached toward the unmoving form of Clark on the screen. "No," she muttered. "I feel… hope. That Clark is here; God, of course he's here. I can't imagine him being anywhere else."

Lex didn't ask what she meant.

He knew.

"We could leave, now," he suggested.

"Yes," she muttered. "He _would_ be the last."

"You don't think he's dead."

The fingers still trembled on the screen; the colours of the LCD warping Clark's figure, making it appear as though he were vibrating.

Lex didn't wait for an answer. He stood and moved to the airlock. Lana took his seat and continued to watch the screen, as though willing Clark to get back up, to be alive, to be alive for her, to be alive to save her.

She wanted to whisper that she missed him. She wanted to run from this prison and hold him in her arms again. She wanted to ask him a million questions, or maybe just sit in silence for a while, remembering his smell and their glory days. She had suspected that he was more than merely human, for a while now, but he was not, as it turned out, meteor infected.

She never knew what to think any more.

"Lex?" she said. Lex was working to open the lead door that separated them from the last of the disinfecting rooms.

"Mm?"

"Will we still get married?"

After being stuck with Lana in a room for nearly a week, Lex couldn't imagine ever letting her go. Despite her love for Clark; despite her detestation of his methods of saving them; despite her apparent miscarriage the third day of hiding...

That was the day she had begun staring at the wall.

There had been so much blood…

He removed himself from his efforts and turned Lana towards him. He grasped her shoulders. He said, in a confident voice, how much he loved her, and assured her that their wedding would be the perfect, beautiful day that she had always dreamed of.

He went back to opening the door. The heavy door swung slowly forward. Lana continued to stare at the screen. Lex pulled the backpack of supplies onto his back and slid on his shoes. Lana stared. Lex stared at Lana, willing her to follow him, to trust him. Lana stared at the screen.

"Clark," she whispered.

She pushed past Lex and opened the second lead door. This one was heavier, but she managed to type in codes and pull it open, and she called his name this time, as though expecting his corpse to wake up and rush down to her…

Lex sighed and sat down, glanced at the screen and realized that she had seen Clark's corpse reawaken. Clark had disappeared.


	3. Chapter 3

_Smallville_ and all of its related elements are copyright © 2001 - 2007 Tollin-Robbins Productions, WB Television and DC Comics. Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

Chapter Three (of 4)

Clark stared at the elevator. It was well hidden behind a false wall, but no one had bet on X-ray vision when they'd designed its hiding place. He punched through the wall, not thinking to look for some sort of switch, and then pushed his fingers in the crack where the elevator doors came together.

He thought of jumping and using the elevator coach long below as a landing pad. But, he thought, if there were people alive down there, he would not want to have to jump them out.

He had been practicing, and though he could hardly fly, he had a solid hover mastered.

For a long while, though, he just fell. This elevator went far, far below the ground. Just before impact, he concentrated, exerting enough effort to move a small mountain, and managed to slow himself to a nearly-stop. He landed, less than gracefully, leaving a sizable dent in the roof of the coach.

The emergency roof exit opened easy for him and he landed in the plush, velvet elevator. The mirrors showed his dirty face and hands curved in the shape of holding a shovel infinity times. They showed the bruises under his eyes from not sleeping again and again.

He'd never seen himself look so haggard.

It was then, seeing himself so many times, that he wondered if he was being watched. It would be just like Lex to have security cameras all over his house, supervising servants, spying on Lana, collecting evidence.

He couldn't force himself to care.

He pushed open the doors, not even thinking to press the 'door open' button, and walked into a stainless white room. A motion detector bleeped and mist sprayed from everywhere.

He wrinkled his nose and stared around, through the mist, and found a security camera, blatant against the white of the room.

"Lex?" he said.

There was no response. He wondered if he'd expected the walls to speak.

"Lex," he said again. "All the evidence points towards this disease being viral. We tried every antibiotic in the hospital, nothing helped. I don't think your fancy sprays and air lock chambers will do anything to get rid of any contamination." He ran his hand through his hair. If they were behind this door, he had to help them, had to get them to safety. He wondered how much they had already seen on the hypothetical security cameras… if there was even anyone behind this wall.

"I'm not infected," he said. He didn't add that, though the virus had apparently begun species jumping, it had only been able to pass to other mammals. He didn't know what he was, but apparently he was not a typical Earthly mammal.

"I don't know all that much about viruses," he continued, "but I know that they can't exactly survive long without cells to infect. So I shouldn't be able to infect anyone." He had done research in between burying the dead. He hadn't known if he should burn them to get rid of the virus for good.

He looked down at his feet. If Lex was watching, contemplating letting him in through the lead doors and into life again, he didn't want him to hate him.

"I've done a lot of thinking, watching people die, and it made me realize how much losing you has hurt me. And I know I apologized for the whole engagement party thing, and the kidnapping thing and the trying to kill you thing, but I don't think you really believed me."

He fixed his eyes on the security camera. He didn't know if anyone was listening. He didn't care.

"Do you remember when I got back from Metropolis that summer? You came onto the farm, clutching my dad's compass in your pocket, and seeing you again," he laughed nervously. "I'd been doing my own twisted form of mourning that summer, Lex, you know the kind. The kind of mourning that follows the loss of a baby, because we always think it's our fault. I know you blamed yourself for Julian's death, and then later, the guilt and then the drugs and alcohol and money and partying. It sort of dulls the pain of reality.

"When you walked down my driveway, and I knew you weren't dead, and you laughed at me and hugged me, it was like getting my brother back."

He waited. He wanted Lex to jump out of the wall. There was lead all around him, now, since the door had shut behind him, and he could close his eyes and concentrate and it truly was as though the rest of the world ceased to exist.

It was peaceful. Lately, he could always hear someone crying.

"Lana," he said, finally. "I'm sorry I couldn't give you what you wanted. I'm sorry I had to hurt you to make you leave."

His eyes were still closed. He had never imagined that the world could be so quiet. Even when he slept, the noises of the city filtered through. If he fell asleep now, he might not wake up.

The door opened.


	4. Chapter 4

_Smallville_ and all of its related elements are copyright © 2001 - 2007 Tollin-Robbins Productions, WB Television and DC Comics. Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

Chapter Four (of 4)

Less than a second after Lana had called through the second door, Lex had pulled it closed again, locked it and grabbed Lana's arm.

"If he's alive," he said, "then he's carrying that disease."

"If he carried the disease," Lana replied, "he'd be dead." She could feel the life returning to her. Since she's lost the baby, since she'd been holed up down here, she'd felt like a different person. She remembered herself now.

She always fought for truth and for herself. She always fought for Clark.

Clark was suddenly standing in the white room. The elevator hadn't moved. _He can teleport_, Lana thought.

They watched the newly maximized screen. Lex still clutched Lana's arm.

When Clark started to talk, about the virus, and how he wasn't infected, Lana wanted to tear her arm away from Lex and open the door and embrace him.

She expected him to look at the camera and say, "Lana, come back to me. Leave Lex. I lied; I love you. I'll tell you everything," because near death experiences often force people to reevaluate their lives and absence often enhances a desire for someone.

But he first spoke to Lex.

She watched Lex's jaw clench.

She knew that Lex loved Clark, too. She knew how much he wanted Clark to be his best man at his third wedding.

Clark called Lex his brother, and Lex's grip on Lana's arm went slack. Lex had never wanted anything more than to have a real brother.

She also knew that Lex's pride would stop him from forgiving Clark so easily.

He spoke to her, next, but briefly. His eyes were closed now. It looked as though he were listening for something.

Lex opened the door.

Clark didn't immediately open his eyes. Clark could suddenly hear two hearts beating strongly. He wondered why he couldn't hear the baby's heartbeat.

Neither one of them, looking so clean and healthy and well rested, moved to hug him. No one even said hello. No one said "God, I'm glad you're alive."

Lex spoke first. He said, "How?"

Clark flinched as though he'd been kicked in the gut. He actually doubled slightly, his hands on his thighs, as if he were about to vomit.

When he looked back up, there was anger etched across his features. Lana could hear the echo of his screamed words at the engagement party, _"I am _not_ done yet."_

"Everyone's dead," he said quietly. His voice trembled. Lana had rarely seen such emotion in Clark, who could brood like a professional, and could hide his emotions better than most.

Suddenly he was yelling. "I watched everyone die, Lex, thousands of people dying because their organs stopped working and they couldn't eat or breathe anymore. I dug graves and called loved ones and cried with every dying person. I couldn't even save one of them, Lex. Not the little blue eyed girls or the pregnant woman or the single fathers of three. I couldn't save my classmates or my neighbors or the woman whose kid I used to baby sit. I watched everyone _die_ and you stand there and ask me _how_?"

Clark's chest was heaving and dirt was flying off his emphatic hands.

"'How' is the wrong question, Lex," Clark said, quiet again. A tear ran down his face, leaving a clear path of clean, tan skin. "The right question is 'why?'"

There was a long silence. "You lost the baby," he said, finally.

"How did you know?" Lana asked.

"How?" Clark replied. "You must be devastated. 'How' still doesn't really seem to matter."

Slowly, he turned. He walked away, the door opening for him and the elevator doors already conspicuously open.

"Clark," Lana called. "Will you… help us?"

"Everything's dead," he said, not turning back. "It didn't spread to birds or insects, so probably the virus didn't spread. I'm sure Lex can have someone swing by with a helicopter."

"They're shooting down helicopters, I heard," Lana protested.

"Take a car, then."

"Road barricades, Clark, don't tell me you didn't know."

He turned back. "What do you expect me to do?"

Lana and Lex stared at him. Clark stared back. The three of them stood, framed nicely on the computer screen on the other side of the doors.

"Where are you going?" Lex asked.

Clark's face had been engraved with tragedy. His eyes were more blue than green, shining with tears. "Home."

He thought he'd head to the Fortress. Finally do his training. He didn't want to face the world again for a long while.

"Clark," Lex said. Clark didn't stop. "Clark," Lex said again. "What you said."

"You know what always kept me apart from everyone?" Clark asked, his head turned so that they could see his profile. "Those Goddamned secrets."

They had never heard him swear before.

They went to sleep that night in the safe room. They woke up in Oliver's penthouse.

Lana called Martha, who, though sad, hardly seemed worried about her son's mysterious disappearance. Lana demanded answers and received none.

It was years before she heard of him again, his name and Lois', beneath a front page story of the Daily Planet. She saw, on Chloe's online album, a picture of her hugging a bulky, bespectacled Clark Kent.

She and Lex never got married.

She didn't try to contact him. The picture next to Clark's name, of a broad shouldered hero, explained everything.


End file.
